July 30, 1996
It will never be the same for Canada's medallists
By TERRY JONES -- Team Sun
ATLANTA - You've read the quote over and over and over again at the Olympics.
"It hasn't sunk in yet.''
But there they were yesterday, Canada's medal winners of the XXVI Olympic Games, and now they'd had time for it to sink in.
They were all there, every one of our medallists except Clara Hughes who was at practice for another event and Donovan Bailey whose ticket they may be holding until the result becomes official.
Canada has won 14 medals at these Olympics so far, which is an impressive enough number considering our history.
Fourteen medals aren't 14 medallists. There are 19 Canadian rowers alone who were there wearing medals, mostly silver, around their necks.
And it's not until you see them all in one room that you realize how many lives have been changed here.
Silken Laumann says it's all sunk in for her.
"I feel so good, so at peace. I know it's the perfect time to go. Life is good. And I'm really looking forward to a regular life.''
Silken Laumann have a regular life?
"I met Silken Laumann for the first time 10 minutes ago,'' said silver medal swimmer Marianne Limpert.
"She's an icon in Canadian sport and she was congratulating me!''
Limpert said it's a total high and coming down isn't easy, especially when you're in the village and the Olympic city and everybody wants to tell you how wonderful you are.
"Training in an ice-cold pool at 7 a.m. helps,'' she laughed.
"Because we were in a competition, I haven't been up that early in a month. And that pool was so cold. It was just freezing.
"But then I come here. This is so cool.''
She's a kid. A first timer who is going to keep going through to another Olympics.
Marnie McBean is an old hand at this.
"I won medals four years ago and they still haven't sunk in yet,'' laughed McBean.
McBean, who will be in somebody's broadcast booth if she doesn't come back for another run in Sydney in 2000, was having fun. She spotted a photographer and, for his benefit started rubbing her bronze medal furiously.
"If I rub this hard enough, maybe it'll turn to gold,'' said the rower who owns a gold from here and two more golds from Barcelona.
Kathleen Heddle, her rowing partner, says for most of them it doesn't hit home until you get home.
"After Barcelona it didn't hit home for me until I got back to Canada and saw all the newspapers.''
Surprise silver medal winner Brian Walton said he had to get some sleep before he can wake up and pinch himself.
"Curt and I were out partying all night'' he said of cycling medal winner Curt Harnett.
Harnett was wide awake and enjoying the event.
"I'm going home with a lot of pride and holding my head high,'' said Curt Harnett who became the first Canadian to win medals at three different Summer Olympics.
"I'm going camping. And I'm going to live a life,'' he said.
On the stage, Mark Tewksbury introduced them all. The gold medal winner from the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona celebrated the day with them all in that joyous two hours at Canada House.
But when the last one of them had left the building, he felt for them, too. Especially the ones who are calling it a career after winning a medal here.
Tewksbury knows what's going to happen next.
"Winning an Olympic medal is a life change,'' he says.
"It doesn't really take that long for the fact that you've won the medal to sink in. What takes time to sink in is that your life will never be the same.
"For most of them, that won't sink in until after they leave here.
"And your life changes in a lot of ways.
"One is immortality. In different degrees, an Olympic medal gives you that. It puts your name in the book.
"And it gives you a pretty broad platform for what you want to do with the rest of your life.''
That's part of the post-Games-glow for an athlete with a medal around his neck.
But after they've left here and after they've had their receptions, public and private at home, it's going to happen to almost all of them.
They're going to crash.
"It happened to me about eight months after Barcelona,'' he said.
"There's a void.
"You wake up one morning and you don't know where to go. All of a sudden you don't have anywhere to go.
"Most of these medallists don't know that, but the Canadian Olympic Association does know it and we have a program, and even some money, to help deal with it when it happens. But it happens at a different time with everybody and it's tough finding out.
"We don't have to have a crash and burn as long as we can find out.''
You want all our Olympic heroes to live happily ever after. But before that happens they have to go through the roughest, toughest time of their lives. And if you happen to know one of them, you should know that.
